Can Fungi Curb Phosphorus Pollution?
Deniz Dutton, Environmental Science major with a minor in Writing at the University of Vermont, has been writing for her student-led environmentally themed magazine for years, and is currently the manager of the magazines editorial team.
For her outreach project, Deniz wrote a compelling article about the use of fungi to help curb phosphorus pollution in Lake Champlain and surrounding areas. This article intends to educate the community about the project and how different scientific collaborations can lead to new, innovative solutions to mitigate the effects of human sourced pollution.
This novel experiment at Shelburne Farms in Vermont aims to enhance the process of letting the plants remove excess nutrients from soil along Lake Champlain by using fungi. The ecological restoration project is centered on a relatively new strategy called myco-phytoremediation, a type of bioremediation — using nature to restore nature. This project was born out of a collaboration between the Burlington-based company MycoEvolve and a lab in the University of Vermont’s Department of Plant and Soil Science. MycoEvolve provides nature-based restoration services for degraded and contaminated sites and is spearheaded by founder Jess Rubin.
Follow this link to the read the full article and explore more of Denizs’ body of work!
